Robert F Kennedy Jr. Formally Announces Independent Candidacy for Presidency in 2024 Transcript

So why don’t you please make a lot of noise and welcome the next President of the United States of America, Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Thank you.

(00:21)
Thank you, Cheryl Hines. And thank you Cheryl for that beautiful introduction and for making me the happiest man alive with the most unbelievable wife. I want to thank the other members of my family are here, particularly Amarillo, who’s done such a great job co-managing the campaign. My son, Bobby and Jackie and Becky and Anthony Shriver and Carolina and Eunice and Jesse Shriver and the other members of my family are here.

(01:27)
Cheryl is a huge, huge football fan, and the real reason we came to Philadelphia is to watch the Eagles play yesterday. I want to thank also Louis Grass Rope for giving the invocation today. Louis, as he said, is a tribal elder of the Lower Brule Sioux, the Lakota people in South Dakota. About a week before he died, my father spent a full day at the Lakota Reservation at Pine Ridge. There was a crowd of 20,000 people waiting for him in Rapid City, and one of his local aides said to him, “We better get back to Rapid. They’ve been waiting for hours.” And he added that the Indians don’t vote. And my father looked at him very sharply and said, “You don’t know who your candidate is.” And that day he saw a family, an entire family of Sioux living in the burned out hulk of an automobile. And he wept, it is one of the only times in his lifetime that I heard of him crying. And that word of his tears swept across the reservation. And on election day, on June 5th, 1968, the last day of his white life, he won the state of South Dakota with the help of the Sioux. And I go back to Pine Ridge as often as I can, and almost every time I go there, the elders share that story with me and they tell me that it was the highest turnout in the history of the nation, and that my father got nearly 100% of the vote. There were only three votes that day that were tallied against him. And the elders always closed that story by saying, “We’re still looking for those guys.”

(03:39)
It’s a hopeful sign now for our country that we celebrate Indigenous People’s Day. It shows that we’re ready as a nation. It shows that our country is now ready to explore and to tell each other the untold histories of those dispossessed people who have previously languished on the margins. But today, as the corrupt powers have overtaken our government, the ranks of the dispossessed have swelled so that they not only include indigenous Americans and black Americans and Hispanic Americans include tens of millions of people who live paycheck to paycheck in financial desperation. The dispossessed also include the legions of the chronically ill, of the addicted, the depressed, the 80% of our country that cannot afford a middle-class lifestyle. A rising tide of discontent is now swamping our country. There’s a danger in this discontent, but there’s also opportunity and promise. The danger is that the demagogues will hijack it toward fascism or that our rulers would defer us to use it as a pretense for an attack on an existential enemy or another in the long pipelines of continuous wars.

(05:18)
The biggest danger that we’ve all seen on a day-to-day basis is that they’ll direct that discontent against each other. As Abraham Lincoln observed, quoting Jesus Christ, “A house divided cannot stand.” A polarized nation is easy for corrupt powers to manipulate and to control and to strip the wealth. Its freedoms, its equity, its dignity. Those are the dangers. So what is the promise? The promise is of reunion. We are told today that our nation is hopelessly divided, but I found something different as I travel this country. The most hateful voices, of course, are always the loudest, but there are a lot of quiet Americans who are looking at disgust at the vitriol, the name-calling, and the venom. They want it to end. They want us to get along.

(06:20)
And you know those loud, hateful controversies obscure these vast areas of agreement. Most of us agree, for example, that we should take care of our veterans. Most of us agree that we should seek peace abroad instead of war. We all agree that teachers should receive decent salaries and respect. We all agree that housing should be affordable and that corporations should pay their fair share. We all agree that we want a clean environment, that we want wholesome communities for our children. And yet these universal yearnings stand alongside a broad agreement that our country has lost its way. Americans are weary, they’re tired of the culture war, the phony slogans, the politicians who use the partisan blame game to divide us against each other and keep us all at each other’s throats. And people suspect that the divisions are deliberately orchestrated and that getting us to hate each other is all part of the scam.

(08:06)
And they’re fed up with being fooled. They’re ready to take back power. There’s no other explanation for the enthusiasm I see every day as more and more people flock to this campaign, sometimes it gives me goosebumps. Their minds may tell them that the situation is hopeless, that the elites are too entrenched, that the corruption is too deep, but their hearts say otherwise. I know that because I meet scores of people every day, even those in the most difficult circumstances who have not given up on America. I’ve walked picket lines in Los Angeles with hotel workers who live in their cars because they can’t afford rent. I visited mobile health clinics in the back routes and roads of Georgia where families get their medical care in the back of a bus. I’ve planted gardens in the food deserts in Watts and Cleveland. I’ve sat amongst migrant children at the border.

(09:15)
I’ve met social workers and doctors in Yuma who treat these immigrants with kindness and heartbreaking generosity as if they were members of their own families. I’ve walked the fields with farmers in Kansas who can’t drink from their own wells because they’re poisoned by pesticides. These are members of the dispossessed now. I’ve sat at kitchen tables in Pennsylvania with parents working every hour that God gives them to afford a home of their own, only to get outbid bid by a hedge fund with a cash offer at the last minute. I’ve worked with veterans who serve honorably in foreign wars and come home then to a country that is bankrupted by those wars.

(10:05)
I’ve eaten with small business owners who had to board up their dreams as Amazon cashed in. I’ve talked from moms from Nevada to New Hampshire who lie awake at home juggling unpayable bills, choosing between gasoline and groceries. I met senior citizens who cut their pills in two to stretch out their prescriptions, and I pulled dead fish from rivers that are clogged with chemical runoff and waste. And I’ve read stories to children who are devastated by chronic disease. It can all look pretty dark. We seem to be cycling from despair to rage and back to despair again. The country is sitting on top now of a powder keg. Americans are angry at being left out, left behind, swindled, cheated, and belittled by a smug elite that has rigged the system in its favor.

Bobby, Bobby, Bobby.

But I’ve also seen… Oh, I’ve traveled millions of American miles across my career. And to quote [inaudible 00:11:34], “I am part of all whom I have met.” For 40 years, Americans across the country have fortified me with their courage and their idealism. But this year I have witnessed an upwelling of optimism that I’ve never seen before. And optimism isn’t the same thing as denial. We have to acknowledge the truth. We do face a decaying infrastructure and record levels of suicide, depression, addiction, chronic disease. We do face an entrenched political corruption and an inequality of wealth not seen in a century. But the good news is that people like yourselves are finally fed up something. Something is stirring in us that says it doesn’t have to be this way. People stop me everywhere at airports, at hotels, and malls on the street, and they remind me that this country is ready for a history making change. They are ready to reclaim their freedom, their independence, and that’s why I’m here today. I’m here to declare myself an independent candidate.

An independent candidate for President of the United States. That’s not all. I’m here to join you in making a new declaration of independence for our entire nation. We declare independence from the corporations that have hijacked our government, and we declare independence from the Wall Street, from big tech, from big pharma, from big ag, from the military contractors and their lobbyist. And we declare independence from the mercenary media that is here to fortify all of the corporate orthodoxies from their advertisers and to urge us to hate our neighbors and to fear our friends. And we declare independence from the cynical elites who betray our hope and who amplify our divisions.

(14:40)
And finally, we declare independence from the two political parties and the corrupt interest that dominate them and the entire rig system, of ranker, of rage, of corruption, of lies that has turned government officials into indentured servants for their corporate bosses. We declare independence from these corrupting powers because they’re incompatible with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness at the people who sat in that hallway ratified for us in 1776, 1788 and ‘7. Now we can guard life. How can we guard life when the for-profit corporations have captured the public agencies that are supposed to protect us? How can we enjoy liberty when a surveillance state seeks to hide the truth and to quash dissent? And how can we pursue happiness when debt and low wages imprisoned so many of our nation’s families? And so, I’ve come here today to declare our independence from the tyranny of corruption which robs us of affordable lives, our belief in the future, and our respect for each other. But to do that, I must first declare my own independence. Independence from the Democratic Party, and from all other political parties. I haven’t made this decision lightly. It’s very painful for me to let go of the party of my uncles, my father, my grandfather, and both of my great-grandfathers, “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald and Patrick, who was the first Irish Catholic ghetto mayor of Boston and Patrick Kennedy, who was a ward boss in Boston.

(17:19)
Both of them launched our political dynasty over 100 years ago. But my sacrifice is nothing compared to the risk our founding fathers took when they signed the Declaration of Independence 247 years ago. They knew that if their revolution failed, every last one of them would be hanged. They chose to place everything on the line. When John Adams put his pen down, after adding his signature to the declaration, he turned to those present and he said to them, “Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish. From this day on, I am with my country.” I’m going to make that same pledge to you today, so that I can stand before you as every leader should stand before you, free of partisan allegiance, free from the back room deals. A servant only to my conscience, to my creator and to you.

(18:41)
Today we’ve turned a new page in American politics. There have been independent candidates in this country before, but this time it’s going to be different because this time the independent is going to win. Three quarters of Americans believe that President Biden is too old to govern effectively. President Trump faces multiple civil and criminal trials. Both of them have favorability ratings that are deep in negative territory. That’s what two party politics has given us, and that’s why we need to pry lose from the hammerlock of the corrupt powers in Washington DC and make this nation ours again.

(19:51)
But there’s a sacrifice that everyone including myself, have to make if we’re going to reunite America. We’re going to have to surrender the kind of political addiction that is ultimately the root of all of these divisions, and that’s the addiction to taking sides. Our nation’s renewal is going to begin when we start to treat each other with respect. Only then will we be able to step outside our tired, stuck debates. We can ask the questions then that nobody thought to ask. We can discover solutions that were right in front of our face. We will listen not just to the other side, but to those who are part from any side.

(20:41)
In a two-sided conflict, both parties have a kind of mutual dependency. Each side depends on the other to define themselves as good guys in contrast to the other side, who of course, are the bad guys. Well, if you’re a team good, then you’ll do anything no matter how unscrupulous to defeat team evil. And that’s why we’ve seen both parties sacrificing their core values and the foundational canons of democracy in a all-out struggle for power in a war against evil, any means justifies the end. The result is that we ourselves become evil if we participate in that battle. The child who is obsessed with hating a parent becomes that parent.

(21:33)
As I’ve surrendered my attachment to taking sides over the past six months, I’ve been able to listen with new ears to people with whom I disagree, and to see solutions that would otherwise have been invisible. I’ll give you an example. Six months ago, I thought that an open border was a humanitarian policy and that if you were for sealing the border, it meant that you were probably a xenophobe and maybe a racist. I was wrong. How did I learn I was wrong? It wasn’t just that I listened, it wasn’t just that I listened to the other side. It was when I actually visited the border and listened to people who weren’t on either side. My views changed as I spoke to border patrol officers, to local officials, to local sheriffs, aid workers and to the migrants themselves.

(22:34)
I saw that no one party has a monopoly on wisdom, and none of the simplistic narratives actually contain the whole truth. My promise to you as president is that I’m going to do this on every issue. I’m going to listen to the stakeholders. I’m going to listen to the stakeholders from every side and beyond any side. I’m going to uphold my moral convictions, of course, absolutely. But I’ll hold my own opinions lightly. I’ll look at the evidence and the arguments, and I’ll choose not the easy path, not the established path, but the right path. In making an independent run for president, I take inspiration from the one other president who did not have a political party, and that president was George Washington.

(23:50)
In his farewell address, Washington issued a prescient warning about the disastrous potential of party politics. Inevitably he said, “Political parties will be taken over by a cunning, ambitious, unprincipled minority who will serve the interest of the party, rather than the interest of the nation and usurp for themselves the reins of government. Washington’s dire prediction has certainly come true. I intend to rest the reins of both parties and return power to the American people. Now you know you’ve all heard the pundits who have been lamenting, “How do we get young people to engage again in politics?” I see so many young people who have now inflamed with my campaign.

(24:54)
And the answer to that question is that, that’s the wrong question to ask. The problem I found is not the young people. The problem is what my generation, the old people have done to politics. The millennials and Gen Z are repelled by the toxicity, the pettiness, and more than anything else by the dishonesty. They want authenticity. Oh, no, the problem is the politics. I’m committed to inaugurating a politics that is worthy of their engagement. I want to share with you a hopeful sign. I’m proud to say that my supporters include both pro-lifers and pro-choicers. They include climate activists

Activists and climate skeptics. They include vaccinated and unvaccinated. They include people who for years have been on both sides of the culture war. Why? Because more and more Americans are beginning to understand that for the good of our country, one cannot insist on getting one’s way on every issue. They understand that people can disagree and still respect each other.

(26:39)
You can be pro-choice and not think that pro-lifers are women hating zealots. You can support the Second Amendment and not think that gun control advocates are totalitarians who hate freedom. This is what I mean from independence. It’s more than being independent of two existing parties. It’s also independence from tribal thinking. It’s freedom from the reflex of having to take sides. Instead of asking people which side are you on?

(27:23)
I’m going to ask people, what do you care about? What do your children need? What is it like to be you? What do you love? Because our country is never going to heal if the formula, the only formula, is for one half of the population to vanquish the other to half in a pitch battle. I’m happy to say that the old political alignments are dissolving right and left. The right and the left have become all mixed up anyhow.

(28:08)
It used to be the Democratic Party opposed censorship. It was the Democratic Party that wanted to reign in the military and the CIA. It was the Democratic Party that fought corporate influence. Remember when Wall Street and big corporations all supported the Republicans. Well, who is the liberal now and who’s the conservative? Who is the left? Who is the right?

(28:33)
These labels make less and less sense. And out of habit, we still group ourselves around the empty husks of those old alignments and threadbare the ideologies. But now that habit is breaking down. That’s why half the electorate no longer identifies with any political party. And 63% of Americans want an independent to run for president.

(29:08)
Of course, the outer structures of the parties still dominate the political landscapes, but they’re hollowed out from within like a building full with termites. What kind of new political structures might emerge from those ruins? What is politics going to look like when it’s no longer us versus them? American democracy should be more than just picking between two candidates anointed by shadowing institutions.

(29:41)
Big oil funds the Republicans, big tech funds the Democrats, big pharma and the military contractors make sure to give to both. Instead of two parties, we have this kind of uni party, a two-headed monster that’s constantly bickering with itself as it leads us all over a cliff. And at the bottom of that cliff is the destruction of our country.

(30:12)
Neither party has offered any kind of meaningful resistance to the endless wars and have sucked dry our wealth and slaughtered our youth. Neither has done anything to reverse the erosion of the American middle class. Both of them are powerless to raid in our exploding deficits. They have contributed equally to the corporate giveaways, to the corruption in Washington and to the erection of a surveillance state.

(30:43)
There are good and honest people within both parties, even in their leadership, but the system itself is hopelessly corrupt. Now, let me tell you what an independent presidency will look like. Because I’m independent of the military contractors, I’ll be able to pursue a foreign policy that puts peace and diplomacy first.

(31:16)
And because I’m independent of wealthy donors, I’ll be able to close the loopholes and giveaways that blow our budget. And because I’m independent of Wall Street, I’ll be able to rescue debtors instead of the banks during the next financial crisis. And because I’m independent of big polluters, I’ll be able to clean up our soil, our water, our air, and protect our purple mountain majesties.

(31:47)
And because I’m independent of corporations, I’ll be able to unravel the corporate capture of our regulatory agencies. And because I’m independent of both political parties, I’ll be able to enact bold policies that are outside of the partisan conversation. Let me be clear though, being independent of the two political parties does not mean making them my enemy.

(32:27)
Dogmatic opposition is just as much a form of dependency as dogmatic loyalty. As president, I’m going to work with officials from both parties who want to join me in serving our nation rather than exploiting and searching for partisan political advantage. Every President enters office promising to unite the nation and to work with people from the other party across the aisle.

(32:56)
None of them ever does it. They can’t. They already chosen a side. Well, I’m not going to have that problem. I’m going to build coalitions from both sides of the aisle. What that means is that members of Congress will start working together across party lines in ways that we’ve barely seen for generations.

(33:18)
Senator Edward Kennedy, my uncle Teddy, has his name on more piece of legislation than any senator in the United States history. He did that. He accomplished that because of his capacity to reach across the aisle. During weekends at Cape Cod, my uncle would bring home people who were his political rivals, who were Orrin Hatch, John [inaudible 00:33:48], Harry Bird, people who were terrible.

(33:51)
For example, on my issue, the environment, I looked at those people and I saw Darth Vader. And I would say to Teddy, why are you making these friendships? And he said, “Because I have a lot of common ground with them. They know the difficulties of living like a politician.” And he always said to me, “As much as I love our country, they love our country the same. We all believe in our country.

(34:20)
We need to be able to talk to each other.” And that allowed him to become the most productive senator in the United States history. I want to do the same thing with my presidency. And I’m going to tell you that because of that, it’s going to be very hard for people to tell whether my administration is left or right. Is it right wing to support small farms?

(34:50)
Is it right or left to pull our nation back from the brink of a war with Russia? Is it right or left to implement a tamper-proof election system that also guarantees that everyone has a right to vote? As long as we’re locked in these habitual debates, the two parties are often blind to common sense solutions. The formula has left them unable to govern.

(35:20)
Practically every year, we do what we did two weeks ago or a week ago, which is to come this far from defaulting on a government shutdown. And that’s just the most obvious example of the paralysis of the two party system. The system runs on inertia year after year, decade after decade. It’s like a runaway bus filled with teenagers fighting about who should take the wheel.

(35:47)
And they ultimately learn that whoever the driver is, they’re all obeying a GPS with a program that’s written by lobbyists and corrupt corporate insiders. So I’m not going to just take the wheel, I’m going to reboot the GPS. And you know who’s going to set the new destination. You are. Because as I’ve traveled this country, I’ve listened to you and I know what your hopes are for the future, and I know your idealism.

(36:38)
And together we’re going to set the GPS toward the Promised Land. The promise that Jonathan Winthrop gave us, the great Puritan leader in 1630 when he stood on the deck of the [inaudible 00:36:51] Arbella. And said and pointed to the verdant landscapes and no European had ever seen. And he said, we’re going to build here a promised land, a city on a hill. A lamp to all the other nations in the world, an exemplary nation.

(37:07)
And we came close to fulfilling that destiny in the years after World War II. When the king and queen look over the balustrade of their castle and they see all of their subjects fighting each other, they go back to the banquet room and they pop champagne courts. As they know, as long as we’re all feuding with each other and nobody’s coming over the castle walls. So this hatred we have for each other is orchestrated.

(37:47)
And what my job is during this campaign and then during my presidency is to unify Americans. And then we’re all going to go over the castle wall together. And we’re going to take back our country. Moses, during the end of his life, he had brought the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt across the Red Sea, promising them they would get to a Promised Land.

(38:23)
But 40 years later, he was 120 years old and they had not found the Promised Land. And the Jewish people were angry at him and they said to him, why did you bring us out of Egypt? We were better off in Egypt. Moses went to God and said, they’re going to stone me. And God took him up to the top of the mountain and he let them look over the river Jordan.

(38:47)
And he showed him the land of Canaan and the Promised Land and he said, you can’t lead them there. They need to get there on their own, but you’ve brought them up to the edge. But the people need to get there on their own.

And he warned them: they can’t waver from left or the right; they have to go forward. Martin Luther King, the night before he died, recalled that without mentioning the story, but he said to the people, “I’ve been to the mountaintop. I’ve seen the promised land. I know what it looks like, and I may not get there with you, but you are going to get there, but you have to get there yourselves.” The people have to decide to take back the power in this country. And I, of course, am no Moses or no Martin Luther King, and I am part of a movement where we are determined as the American people to go back and reach that promised land again.

(39:55)
And I do know what it looks like because I’ve seen, I’ve had glimpse of it during my lifetime. I know it’s in America with a prosperous middle class where if you work hard, if you play by the rules, you can finance a home. You can raise a family, you can take a summer vacation, and you can put something aside for your retirement. I know that it’s a place where we don’t have to choose between economic prosperity and environmental protection. I know it’s a place where our children will have the same opportunities for dignity, and enrichment, and prosperity, and good health as the communities that our parents gave us. I know it’s a place where every American enjoys the right to vote and everybody has absolute faith, and our electoral system has integrity and it’s the best in the world.

(40:55)
I know it’s a place with incorruptible regulatory agencies. When I was a kid, the FDA, the CIA, or the FDA, the EPA, the NIH were the gold standard regulatory agencies in the world, the other nations in Europe and Latin America based their regulations on what our regulatory agencies said. They were absolutely incorruptible. They were gold standard signs. I know that that promised land is a place which is a bastion for the rights that are enshrined in our constitution. And I know that that promised land is a place where America is a moral authority around the world, that people look to us for leadership, and it’s a place that promotes peace instead of war. And I know that America is possible when we declare independence from the deadlocked party establishment. That is the America that’s possible when we declare independence from the war machine that devours a trillion dollars a year. That’s the American that’s only possible when we stop fighting each other and go over the fortress wall. And that’s the America that I’m going to serve when I become President of the United States. Now, the media pundits are going to tell you that we don’t have any chance. They’ve given me a couple of first names. One of them is long-shot candidate, and they say, my impact is only going to draw votes from the other candidates.

(43:04)
The Democrats are frightened that I’m going to spoil the election for President Biden, and the Republicans are frightened that I’m going to spoil it for President Trump. The truth is, they’re both right. My intention is to spoil it for both of them, and only that inside the beltway myopia deludes them into thinking that we have no chance of winning. I have seen the polls that they won’t show you. I’ve sat at the kitchen tables that they don’t bother to visit. I’ve shaken hands with tens of thousands of invigorated Americans over the past six months who are excited about a change. And I can tell you our campaign has ignited a movement that has been smoldering for years, a movement to reclaim democracy, to resurrect the promise of our republic, the promised land. And that’s the real reason that the party elites in Washington and the insiders are terrified of my candidacy. They recognize an authentic challenge to their power when they see one. There’ve been any establishment candidates before, but none of them who understands actually how to get the job done. Unlike President Trump, I’ve been fighting corporate corruption and suing government agencies for 40 years. I know how they work, and I know how to clean them up. And unlike any president since 1963, I will stand up to the military industrial complex. I will cash in the peace dividend, and I’ll bring our troops home with honor. I’ll rebuild America’s strength from the inside out. What really terrifies the elites, though, is not me. It’s what I represent, a populous movement that defies left-right division.

(45:43)
I am merely the bowsprit of a ship that is going to cut through the armadas of corruption, of secrecy, of lies. And except for the small minority of public officials who are actually corrupt, I’m going to tell you this secret. I am no enemy to the people of the two-party establishment because, guess what? They don’t believe in it anymore, either. They don’t believe their own posturing. They don’t believe their own rhetoric. That’s why so many public figures, Democrats and Republicans, have told me quietly, “I can’t support you publicly, but I really hope you win.”

(46:26)
And they, too, want liberation from the system that has captured them. And isn’t that ultimately what we all want? Liberation. Liberation from a system that robs us of our wealth, our health, our hope, our patriotism, our ideals, our freedoms, and ultimately, our sense of ourselves as a good and capable people. Is that kind of freedom possible? Is healing our divided nation possible? If we wait for someone else to liberate us and unite us, no, then it’s not possible. It becomes possible when we decide to take action ourselves. People ask me, “Can you win?” And I want to turn that question back on you. Will our movement win?

Yes.

Can this movement restore democracy, health, prosperity, and freedom?

Yes.

I’m not asking you to make a prediction. I’m asking you to make a choice. It’s going to happen if you choose for it to happen. Democracy doesn’t come about as a gift from oppressive elites and authorities when they finally relent. Democracy comes when people choose to exercise their power. And so I’m asking you today to join me in exercising the sovereign choice of a democratic people. Are we ready to win?

Yes.

Are we ready to win?

Yes.

And that’s what a new Declaration of Independence sounds like. Remember this moment. We have a year and one month until the election; let’s go take back our country. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. Thank you, baby.

Dennis wants us to do a hands up.

Oh, hey, hey. I love you, man.

Good job, congratulations.

Thank you.

Seriously, it was very well said. That was great, right? He did a great job.

Let’s do a hands up.

Great job.

You too.